It’s How You Play the Game: The Fate of Western Civilization and Grade-School Soccer

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"May your work be a fight, may your peace be a victory. War and courage have accomplished more great things than love of one's neighbour. It was not your pity but your courage that so far has saved the downtrodden." --F. Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

By Barry Rubin

It‘s something of a stretch to compare a soccer game among eleven-year-olds with the fate of the democratic world but I’ve always managed to see big issues in small things.

The basic background is this: My son is playing on a local soccer team on the East Coast which has lost every game, often by humiliating scores. The coach is a nice guy but seems an archetype of contemporary thinking. He tells the kids not to care about whether they win, puts players at any positions they want, and doesn’t listen to their suggestions.

He never criticized a player or suggested how he could do better. My son, bless him, had once remarked to me, “How are you going to play better If nobody tells you what you’re doing wrong?“ The coach just told them how well they were playing. Even after an 8-0 defeat he told them they’d played a great game. And, of course, the league gave trophies to everyone whether their team is in first or last place.

So were they really happier to be “relieved” of the strain of trying to win, “liberated” from feeling bad at the inequality of athletic talent? I’d even seen an American television documentary about boys and sports which justified this approach, explaining that coaches were doing something terrible by deriding failure, urging competitiveness, and demanding victory.

No doubt, of course, there are coaches who make unreasonable demands, scream at the kids, and humiliate them. This may be a big problem that should be righted when things go to the other extreme. But it isn't a blue state problem!

Or am I right in thinking that sports should prepare children for life, competition, the desire to win, and an understanding that not every individual has the same level of skills? And a central element in that world is rewarding those who do better, which also offers an incentive for them and others to strive rather than thinking they merely need choose between becoming a government bureaucrat or dependent.

The playing field was perfectly even but the boys were clearly miserable. They felt like losers, rejecting by their behavior the claim that everything was just great or that mediocrity was satisfactory as long as everyone was treated identically. They knew better than to think outcomes don’t matter.

In a truly sad gesture, one boy had suggested before still another losing game that they form a circle, put their hands in, and cheer themselves, “Like the good teams do.” Part-way into the season, the kids had even chosen a nickname for the team that expressed their sense of being weak losers.

When the opportunity came to step in as coach for one game I jumped at the chance to try an experiment. I’ve never coached a sport before and am certainly no expert at soccer, despite my son's efforts. Still, I thought the next game could be won by simply placing players in the positions they merited and motivating them to triumph.

For the starting line-up, I put the best players in and kept them in as long as they didn’t say they were tired or seem fatigued. Of course, I adhered to the league rule that everyone played at least half the game but I didn’t interpret that to mean that everyone should play precisely the same amount of time.

I didn’t put terrible players in at forward or in the goal. It didn’t take any genius to do so, just basic sports common sense. You don’t need Ayn Rand to tell you which way the wind blows.

Before the game, I gave them a pep talk with the key theme as follows:

“Every week you’ve been told that the important thing is just to have a good time. Well, this week it’s going to be different. The number-one goal is to win; the number-two goal is to have a good time. But I assure you that if you win you will have a much better time!”

And that’s just what happened. They took a 1-0 lead and held it, in contrast to the previous week when it was 0 to 0 at the half but turned into a 3-0 humiliation when someone ill-suited was made goal keeper just because he wanted that job. When kids with fewer skills didn’t want to play defense, I pointed out that these were critical positions since winning required preventing the other team from scoring. At the end, they performed heroically, holding off repeated attacks on their goal.

I worried that the boys who played less of the game and were given seemingly less significant positions would be resentful. But quite the opposite proved true. With the team ahead, they were thrilled. One shouted from the sidelines something I thought showed real character, “Don’t let the good players do all the work!” Instinctively, he recognized that some players are better but wanted to bring everyone’s level up rather than down. I’m tempted to say he was going against what he was being taught in school.

They played harder with a bit more pressure and a less equal share of personal glory than they’d ever done before. But after the victory, they were glowing and appreciative, amazed that they had actually won a game.

Yes, winning and being allowed to give their best effort as a team was far more exciting and rewarding for them than being told they had done wonderfully by just showing up, that everyone should be treated equal as if there were no difference in talents, and that the results didn’t matter.

Suddenly, I noticed that one boy’s mother was really angry at him, claiming he hadn’t showed good sportsmanship because he was too happy over the victory. Not seeing anything that might have provoked her outrage, I wondered whether this was a suggestion that one should apologize for winning. Still, the bawling out didn’t put a damper on his big smile.

Next week, of course, they were back to losing (4-1, 4-0, 5-0). But I think that perhaps they learned something useful to counter the indoctrination they are getting in school. If you don’t care about winning, you’re merely handing triumph to the other side. In a soccer league that might not matter, in personal life, your level of achievement and satisfaction is going to depend on giving your best effort.

If a country is indifferent to succeeding, the opposing team’s success might be very costly indeed.

As I said at the start, perhaps not too much should be read into this little parable. Yet the broader question may be the most significant issue of our time: Why should Western democratic societies abandon the techniques and thinking that have led to such great success in order to embrace failure as glorious or victory as ,shameful?

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org/ and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.